


All For You

by cresswells



Category: Milky Way (Anthropomorphic)
Genre: Doomed Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Planetshipping, Romantic Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-15 02:17:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cresswells/pseuds/cresswells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A recently-injured Jupiter is worried that Earth’s human population are hurting her far worse than any asteroid could hurt him.</p><p>Pregnantfem!Earth/Friendlygiant!Jupiter</p>
            </blockquote>





	All For You

**Author's Note:**

> I can’t claim pregnant!Earth as my own idea – I took inspiration from andythanfiction’s gorgeous jupitearth fanart.

Earth brushed her hands through the thick clouds that covered her head, shaking a few rainstorms down over Western Europe as she did so.  The rainfall helped to clear her head and she waved a morning greeting to Luna, who twirled happily around her like a little halo.

Her hands, as they always did when she first rose from her orbit, went to her stomach, tracing the familiar landmarks of mountain ranges and smooth beaches and ragged coastlines.  It hadn’t changed much, but she thought it looked faintly bigger than the day before.  Over time, she’d discovered that the more her life forms evolved and learned about the workings of the planet they lived on, the plumper she grew.  Although the pregnancy sometimes caused her moods – and with them, her chemical make-up – to fluctuate, it gave her such pride every time she woke to find her bump slightly bigger and her little life forms buzzing over their latest discovery.

After checking to make sure none of her life forms had done anything too extreme while she was sleeping (she’d slept through the start of World War Two, and still blamed herself for the years of fighting and destruction that had followed) Earth stirred up a small typhoon along the coast of China and used the breeze to propel herself to her feet.

“It’s been two weeks,” she said aloud to Luna.  “You think he’s up for visitors yet?”

Luna whistled an affirmation.  Earth checked her position in the System.  She was on target to meet this cycle’s rotation, just as she’d met it on all the cycles that had come before.  One quick visit to check up on Jove wouldn’t hurt.  Making a mental note of her place in the System, she took Luna by the hand and sped off in search of her friend.  As always, he wasn’t hard to find.

Jove was a constant force of energy – like the ammonia storm clouds that swept across his surface, he just couldn’t stay still.  But he was a massive being of few words – a gentle giant, as Saturn liked to say – and for a planet so gaseous in composition he was remarkably steady and dependable in nature.  On his chest still burned a nasty red scar, marking the impact site of the last asteroid that had torn through his atmosphere.  It looked sore, but Jupiter had refused Earth’s help when she’d first tried to rush to his side after hearing the news from Mars.  His moon Ganymede had been inspecting the site when she arrived, and she’d experienced a strange flare of anger when she saw them so close together.  Jove had never let _her_ get that close to him.

His moons were circling him as usual today.  Amalthea sang a greeting to Earth that she didn’t understand.  She smiled and waved at the little satellite anyway, and Luna, perched just above her head, chirped happily in response.

“Hello, Earth,” Jupiter rumbled.  She was pleased to see that despite the still-visible scar, he looked well.  He grinned down at her.  “You’re looking slightly greener today.”

Earth felt her surface temperature increase at the compliment.  “Oh, you noticed?”  She grinned and patted her round stomach fondly.  “They’ve just started up a new wind farm in Montana, bless them.  They’re so good to me.”

Jupiter’s smiled faded slightly.  Earth pretended not to notice that.

“They’ve found the Higgs boson since you last saw me up close, too,” she continued, undeterred.  “That’s why I’m slightly rounder.  And they have a few more stories to tell.”

Jupiter’s swirling amber eyes lit up.  No matter how distant and moody he seemed to become recently whenever she mentioned her humans, he couldn’t hide his excitement.  He loved the stories her human inhabitants told each other.

“Do these ones revolve around me, again?” he asked teasingly.  Earth rolled her eyes.  A few millennia ago, Jupiter had noted in a slightly peevish tone that most of the stories of Earth’s inhabitants seemed to revolve around Sol.  “When are you going to introduce them to me, hmm?” he’d asked jokingly.  Earth had taken his words to heart.  All it had taken were a couple of whispered words to her belly to plant the idea into their minds.  Jupiter’s face when she’d told him about the Romans the next time they met had been priceless.  Earth had never seen her boisterous friend so enthusiastic about anything before.  To this day, he had a fondness for Rome and the countries that had made up her vast empire.

She folded herself carefully into a comfortable sitting position, brushing the creases from her grassy skirts.  “Here,” she said, gesturing for Jupiter to join her.  “I’ll show you.”

He was sitting beside her in an instant, tapping his fingers impatiently on one leg.  Earth laughed at his enthusiasm, and lifted her palms towards him.  As she did so, thick scribbly lines etched their way across her surface, moving down her shoulders and arms, and finally curling around the tips of her fingers.  One by one they transformed into markings that had been etched on her skin for more orbital cycles than she could count; handprints and cave paintings, crop patterns and hieroglyphs, tiny carved figurines and breathtakingly realistic portraits.  Eventually they settled into more recent art forms – printed words and rolls of film began to dance across her palms.  When she reached the present cycle Jupiter leaned forward eagerly, his eyes drinking in everything she had seen and felt her humans write and perform over the last few months.  When it was over, he sighed happily and the images flickered into incomprehensible scrawling lines again, which curled up along her arms and sank beneath her watery surface.

“I love your tattoos,” Jupiter said, his gaze sweeping across her arms and shoulders longingly.  He rubbed his arm where the Great Red Spot churned away.  “All I have is stripes and spots and scars.”

Earth played with a few wispy strands of white cloud that hung across her face.  “Your stripes are beautiful,” she protested.  “And your storm spots and scars all tell their own stories.”

He shrugged, getting to his feet.  He towered so high above her that she had to tilt her head back to see him properly.  A few cirrus clouds brushed across her shoulders as she moved.  “Leaving so soon?” she asked him.  That wasn’t unusual.  She was busier than him – her schedule demanded it.  His journey around Sol took far longer than hers, but he always seemed active nevertheless.  It was a miracle that she could ever get him to stop and sit down, she thought wryly.

But today, Jupiter shook his head.  “I can hang around a bit longer,” he said.  He twisted the dust ring on his finger and squinted down at her.  “You know, from up here, you don’t look so good.”

She tensed.  _Not this again._   “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Jupiter paused, and for a moment, she thought he might actually give her a straight answer.  But then he shrugged and looked away.  “Never mind,” he muttered.  “Your ozone layer looks sore, that’s all.  I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“No, you did.  Go ahead and say it.”

Jupiter looked alarmed.  “Say what?”

“Whatever it is you’ve been desperate to say since the Industrial Revolution began!”  Earth stood, clenching her fists.  His frowns and casual inquiries into her wellbeing she could accept, but she was tired of his denials and veiled warnings.  “Go on, let it out.  _Earth, your humans are destroying you.  Look at yourself, Earth, your atmosphere really doesn’t look too healthy today.  You should end them, Earth, before they end you_.”

Jupiter’s eyes bulged.  She didn’t think she’d ever seen him stand so still.  “I’d never say any of that to you,” he said in a much quieter voice.

“But you think it every time you see me,” she accused.

“Because –” he began, and then he caught himself.  “It’s your celestial body,” he protested.  “And they’re your life forms.  What you put into your atmosphere has nothing to do with me.”

“ _I’m_ not the one messing with my atmosphere,” she began, and then stopped, realising she was only proving Jupiter’s point.

He gazed at her sadly.  “You can’t blame me for being worried,” he said.

“Jove,” she said wearily.  “They’ll stop soon.  They’ve made so much progress in my last few solar orbits.  You said yourself that I looked slightly greener today.”

He shook his head so vigorously that a few droplets of liquid hydrogen were dislodged from his hair.  Io, who had been buzzing around his head, squeaked and drew back in alarm.  “Today, yes.  But what about tomorrow?  What about thirty solar orbits from now?”  He grimaced.  “Your atmosphere has always been hard to predict, but that was okay.  It was natural.  It wasn’t _hurting_ you.  Lately, it seems as though you grow darker every time I see you.”

“They’re not hurting me,” Earth protested adamantly.  She rested her hands on her belly protectively.  Lightning flashed in her eyes.  “They _love_ me.  And I love them.  You don’t understand.”

“I do,” Jupiter said.  He sounded sadder now than she’d ever heard him before.  “Believe me, Terra, I understand completely.”

He gazed down at her and whatever anger still remained in her atmosphere evaporated.  Carefully, she reached out and traced her fingers along the ragged tear across his chest.  _He did this for you_ , a voice that sounded a lot like Venus’ whispered in her head.  _All the hits he’s taken over the cycles – he’s taken them all to keep them from reaching you._

His hand reached up to cup hers.  “Don’t,” he said in a strained voice.  “I’m not good for your atmosphere, either.”

She pulled away, though a tiny part of her – a part deep inside her crust, uninhabited by any life forms – wished she didn’t have to.

“You’re right,” she admitted out loud.  “I am getting darker.  And it scares me.  My humans are getting cleverer and braver every day but they have so much still to learn.  I don’t mind the changes they’re making in my atmosphere, but I don’t want their mistakes to hurt them or slow them down.”

Jove let out a breath of hydrogen and helium that lasted so long, Earth wondered if he’d been worried about her for an even greater period of time than she thought.

“We’re all scared,” he told her.  “You’re our pride and joy.  You know that, right?”

She scoffed.  “Sol’s the one everyone’s enamoured with.”  She herself wasn’t such a fan of the star she’d once admired so ardently – she’d discovered early on in her pregnancy that long-distance relationships weren’t as romantic as they first seemed.  She stayed close to him, but it was for the sake of her children rather than out of any loyalty to their distant father.

Jupiter smiled.  His eyes were gentle now and the storms roiling across his face looked beautiful rather than dangerous.  “We cling to Sol because we have to.  But you’re the special one.  None of the rest of us could ever cultivate life – you’ve done that and more.”  He reached out, his hands so close to her rounded belly.  He looked wistful.  “You’ve let them grow into magnificent creatures so bright and beautiful that each one of them could be a celestial being in their own right.  We’re all protective of them.”

“Even Mars?” Earth asked dubiously.  The red planet hadn’t taken too kindly to her inhabitants’ latest gadgets trawling across his body.

“Even Mars,” Jupiter affirmed.  “I think he secretly wishes he could be more like you.  You have something so rare.  And he’s so close to you.  It’s hard for him, especially with only two moons for company.”

Earth felt a pang of sympathy for her neighbour.  She’d never considered that he might be jealous of her.  She was never alone, not really.  She couldn’t even begin to imagine what loneliness felt like.  And Mars had taken some pretty serious hits over the cycles, too. 

“That asteroid,” she said hesitantly.  “Venus says you took the hit for me.”

Jupiter crossed his arms over his chest, as though he was trying to hide the impact scar from view.  He didn’t say anything.

“Thank you,” she said.  “You didn’t have to do that for me.”

“It would have destroyed you.”  His voice was surprisingly gruff.  He didn’t look at her.

“It would have changed my atmosphere, scarred my surface and hurt some of my life forms,” she corrected.  “I’d still be around.”

He shook his head.  “You know that’s not what I meant.  Whether it hurt all of them, or just a few thousand, you would grieve for dozens of solar cycles.”  He looked at her then.  “Sometimes I wonder if this change your humans are inflicting on your atmosphere is so bad after all. I mean, look at me.  I’m hardly fit for inhabitancy, but I’m not so bad.”  He waved a hand over his own body, where gasses in every shade of brown and cream and orange swirled, forming his endlessly changing surface.  Earth looked.  For a moment, she almost wished she was more like him.  How could something so toxic to her children be so beautiful?

“But that’s not you,” he continued.  “You were meant to create and nurture.”  His gaze rested on her protruding stomach.  “You’re meant for greater things than the rest of us.  Without your life forms, you wouldn’t be you.”

The way he looked at her then… it was as if nothing in the universe mattered but her.  As if an asteroid ripping through his atmosphere was nothing to him if it meant keeping her safe.  A raincloud drifted close to her eye and she wiped it away.  Earth had always been a dreamer, but after all these cycles, she’d never imagined their friendship could grow stronger than it already was.  She’d certainly never entertained the possibility of their friendship changing into something else.

And it couldn’t.  Of course it couldn’t.  He’d said it himself – he wasn’t good for her.  Still, damaging her atmosphere was the last thing on her mind as she lifted herself up onto her tiptoes and gently pressed her lips to his.

And for the first time since he began to form over four billion of Earth’s solar cycles ago, Jove froze.

She laughed against his lips and he recovered from his shock just enough to lift one shaky hand to her cheek.  “Careful,” he murmured when she pulled away from him slightly.  “You’re playing with dangerous chemicals, Terra.”

“I’ll be the judge of what’s bad for me,” she said, though she stepped quickly away from him.  She wondered if any negative effects from their proximity were already showing in her atmosphere, but if so, Jove didn’t seem to notice.

“Come along, Luna,” she called.  The little moon chirped and fluttered to her side.

That seemed to jerk Jupiter back into motion.  He took a step towards her.  “Leaving so soon?”

“Duty calls,” she replied.  She nodded towards the burning hot star, flickering brightly in the distance.  She’d been dormant for too long – any longer, and her clever little life forms might notice.  And though she didn’t want to admit it to him, there was now the added problem of Jupiter’s nearness.  She wanted to move closer to him again, even though every warning voice in her head told her that wasn’t a good idea.

She took another step back and forced a teasing smirk.  “It’s a small System and you’re heading my way.  I’m sure I’ll see you around.”  Resting one hand on her stomach, she blew a kiss to the planet who still stood gaping at her as though he wasn’t quite sure what to make of the last few minutes.  Then she was off, settling back into her familiar orbit.  A place in their System that Jupiter could never follow her to.

Once she was sure she was alone she span giddily on her axis and smiled to herself, remembering the way his lips had burned against hers.  The impossibility of a future between them cast a shadow over the experience, but for now she closed her eyes and basked in the memory of the heat in his eyes and the gentle brush of his atmosphere against hers.

 _All the hits he’s taken over the cycles_ , Venus had said, _he’s taken them all to keep them from reaching you._   She wondered what her starry-eyed neighbour would have to say about this development.

 “What do you think, Luna?” she asked her moon.  She opened her eyes and brushed a hand carefully over her stomach.  “Do you think we could ever make it work?”

Luna positively beamed down at her in response.

Earth smiled up at the little glowing satellite.  It was getting late to check in with Venus, so Earth settled into her place in the System and span, drifting off as the familiar motion took hold of her.  Her last thought was of Jupiter, and what she’d say and do when she saw him next.

She wanted to kiss him again.  Danger be damned.


End file.
